Exposing the underbelly of Armstrongism in all of it's wacky glory! Nothing you read here is made up. Every crazy, weird and wacky quote is straight from the pens of Armstrongite leaders or members who think they possess some insight into God and the Bible. What you read here is the up to date face of Herbert W Armstrong's legacy. It's the gritty and dirty behind the scenes look at Armstrongism as you have never seen it before!

Ambassador College Fine Arts Hall Demolition Continues

9 comments:

Glad I got to see the campus one last time a couple of years ago. One of my first jobs was taking photos of the 2 academic center building as they were going up - documenting constructions issues, etc. Like Dennis, my wife and I got married in that building and had our wedding reception outside by the fountains. Had a lot of classes in those buildings. Saw them on the King of the Nerds TV show. I am a little sad to see them go. NOt sad at all to see Armstongism fade into nothing.

When I first arrived on campus, these buildings simply didn't exist. If they were even planned, we didn't know.The thing is, I actually preferred the gardens that they replaced. What we came to know as the Loma D. Armstrong Academic Center really looked out of character with the surrounding mansions from yesteryear. I could never understand how or why these buildings were ever even allowed to be built. Most historical societies would probably have regarded the LDAAC to be cultural pollution.

During some of the construction, I actually lived in one of the refurbished, and formerly unknown dorms on Olcott. Out of my dorm mates that semester, there was one who was actually even cool. Rich, from New Jersey, had a degree in teaching prior to coming to AC, and we had two common hobbies, weight training, and Colt 45 Malt Liquor. Since I was under age, each year, I had to find a "mentor" to buy beer for me, and unfortunately my mentors had a bad habit of getting expelled from AC, but, that's another story. That particular year, the senior, or graduation ball was at the Hollywood Palladium. Rich and I did what we always did! We left the ball, got a sixer of Colt 45 tall boys, and chugged them behind a neighborhood gas station! We surreptitiously made our reentrance to the Palladium just in time, too. They were reading the Senior Class will, and both of us ended up being bequeathed something by seniors, and would have been conspicuous by our absence had we been as much as 5 minutes later.

HWA and Loma used to take nightly walks. One time, during the construction, the late Orlin Grabbe, another friend named Bill, and I happened to be walking around on Olcott Place. Those two guys were on the construction crew, and were giving me a tour. For some unknown reason, Orlin decided to climb into one of the large round planters which were perched along the property line of Ambassador Hall, put some sort of long grass weed into his mouth and began flapping his arms, and "wawking" like a parrot. Bill suddenly proclaimed, "Why Orlin, didn' t you see Mr. And Mrs. Herbert Armstong walking up the street?" Orlin replied, "You're just lyin', Bill!"' And then to his horror, discovered the reality of the slow but sure approach of Herbert and Loma. Of course, he climbed down, we all nervously smiled and waved, and there were no further repercussions . Spontaneous Armstrong sightings were often tense, like the commotion which was caused when HWA was leading a tour of Japanese dignitaries through the dining hall, and a plastic container of mustard with which I was playing suddenly ruptured and sprayed on a nearby wall. They most certainly had to have seen both the rupture, and my dutiful effort at cleaning it up from their vantage point of the mezzanine of the dining hall!

There's a wealth of material that never made it into your Envoy, or AC College Catalogue. I like to see the evil empire dissolve, no doubt about it, but there are so many delicious illegal memories that demolition cannot obliterate, our own little flipping of the bird before it was cool, to HWA, GTA, and all of their lackeys who tried to dominate us, break our will, and subvert us to their version of the Borg, yet failed miserably! Let us raise a Colt 45 to all such illegal memories! Or as my bud, Richie Soul would quote from Kool and the Gang, "Celebrate good times, come on!!!!....."

Fact is the tithes of many hard working people went into building all that material excess with no real lasting spiritual effects.

HWA would've done better to build the church into an institution that had a reputation for helping the poor and disenfranchised, and was known to treat it's members equally: THAT WOULD'VE BEEN A LEGACY THAT COULD NOT BE TORN DOWN.

I agree with anonymous of 5:48. Herbert had quite elite tastes, shame he didn't just become an architect. I remember him getting involved in the furnishings and color combinations in one of the new dorms, (sort of like Martha Stewart). But then we have to remember he had limitless funds, maybe many of us could have become knowledgeable about architecture given the chance. He had to impress all those world leaders too with his fine tastes, and Stuben crystal of course. I remember him talking about Stuben crystal and how valuable and beautiful it was. Wasn't the idea that in 'the Kingdom' we would all be living with this finery.